The information-communication industry is currently undergoing tremendous change from the constant evolution of new technologies and changing market conditions. As a result, network and information service providers such as telephone, cable, and wireless carriers, Internet Service Providers and utility companies all have the need to rapidly deploy new systems and system elements and alter their existing management systems to accommodate evolving business and network requirements. These requirements include the ability to integrate existing network equipment and systems with new elements and applications, customize existing systems and applications, and scale systems to accommodate growing networks and traffic volumes.
One area of management involves fault management. Fault alarm incidents (or messages) are routinely generated for the various components of a network to allow the service provider to monitor the operational state of the network. Fault management systems generally receive and process these alarm incidents in accordance with fault management objectives as defined by the service provider. Unfortunately, however, current fault management systems can be difficult to implement and modify as the network, along with management objectives, change over time. In addition, existing systems are inefficient with substantially all of the management processing occurring in a centralized management processor system.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improved fault management system and method.
The present invention provides an improved fault management system and method. In one embodiment, the system includes a gateway and a management processor system. The gateway is communicatively connected to a network for receiving alarm incidents from the network. The gateway has a rule engine for (1) selecting a control object from a set of control objects based on information from the alarm incident, and (2) processing the selected control object. The management processor system has a processor for processing configuration objects in response to the selected control object for implementing fault management objectives defined by at least one user.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.